


A wind in the door.

by orange_crushed



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol, Angst, Episode: s09e13 The Purge, M/M, Season/Series 09, episode coda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-07
Updated: 2014-02-07
Packaged: 2018-01-11 11:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1172514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orange_crushed/pseuds/orange_crushed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Cas," Dean says, so softly that anyone else would have missed it, barely a breath of sound between his lips. But Castiel hears it. He would have heard it from a hundred miles away, a hundred thousand.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A wind in the door.

It’s almost two in the morning when Castiel gets back to the bunker. He stands for a while in the silence of the open hall, hearing nothing but the subterranean hum of the machines that keep the power running, electrical music; there are safety lights in the walls, backups for backups, cold storage and air filtration. This is a crypt of the fearful nuclear age. _Or else it is an egg_ , Castiel thinks. An egg, a shell. Bodies sleep here and wake up again, take meals in the kitchen and sit reading in the library. There is a dungeon, of course: natural things like eggs, like bodies, have the ability to isolate and process waste. An egg is better than a crypt, in many ways. They are easily cracked but stronger than they look. It’s a surprisingly pleasing analogy and he lets the thought run through him in circular patterns, making ripples as it goes. One day he might say it out loud, just to test it. And anyway, Dean might like it. Sam might appreciate it, too. Castiel walks through the corridor, thinking, and stops at the end of the hall.

There’s a light on in the kitchen that he didn’t expect. 

Dean is sitting at the table alone in front of a laptop, purple circles under his eyes and his cheek resting heavily on one hand. There’s a bottle of whiskey open next to him. His cheeks are pale and his skin is dull, clammy. Tinny music is coming out of the laptop speakers. Castiel thinks it might be a cartoon, something he’s seen playing on motel televisions across a dozen different states. He stands in the doorway for a moment, watches Dean’s glazed stare into the screen. After a second, Dean glances up. His eyes go wide and then slide down to the table again.

"Uh," Dean says. He scrubs at his face with one hand. "You’re back." He gestures at the seat across from him and Castiel takes it, sits down with his hands in his lap. Dean shuts the laptop and pushes it aside. "Pit stop, huh?" he says. He pours himself a drink. "Any good news?"

"No," Castiel says. "No news at all."

"Yeah," Dean says. "Same here." He takes a sip and looks down at the glass in his own hand. "You want a drink?" He says it like it’s a joke. But Castiel gets up and goes to the cabinet and takes a glass down for himself. He sets it in front of Dean. "Wow," Dean says. "Okay." He tips the liquor bottle into Castiel’s glass and fills it halfway. Castiel picks it up. He won’t be able to feel it. Not like the beers, or the cheap plastic bottles he used to drink sometimes in the back room at the gas station. He drinks it anyway. It’s something to do. And for some reason it pleases Dean, makes him lean closer. There’s a ritual here. Partaking of something together. It’s not an empty gesture, even if he can’t feel it. He sees that now. He didn’t before. _I am still learning_ , Castiel thinks. Something unformed, unfinished. A work in progress, like an egg. This is not a thought an angel is meant to have. But it feels good to think it. “So you didn’t find Metadouche.”

"He’s in hiding. Expelling Gadreel has probably put him on edge."

"Great," Dean says.

"It’s not terrible," Castiel says. "Metatron will reveal himself eventually. In the meantime we removed a spy. Saved Sam."

"Yeah, hooray," Dean says, and Castiel stops looking curiously into the bottom of his own glass to stare at him. "Throw a parade." Dean finishes his drink and pours another.

"You and Sam are still-"

"I don’t want to talk about it," Dean says. "You want to talk, talk about something else."

"Why aren’t you sleeping?"

"Looney Tunes marathon."

“ _Dean_.”

"Why are you here?" Dean snaps. "You’ve got nothing, I’ve got nothing, what did you come here for?" He sounds angry, so angry that Castiel almost misses it. The way his hands clench in the hem of his shirt, the way his eyes can’t land on Castiel for long. It hurts to look for those things, and it hurts worse to find them. Castiel knows that Dean is very good at holding words like weapons in reverse, so that the point faces inward. And he rarely misses.

"I came here," he says, "because I was-"

"Bored?" Dean snorts.

"Lonely," Castiel says, and Dean’s eyes finally lift a little, almost meeting his. They are unspeakably sad. "I was alone, and I am tired of being alone." Dean inhales, like he means to speak. And then exhales again.

"You picked some shitty company."

"I disagree."

"Cas, okay, that’s nice but it’s not like you know better," Dean says. "You got stuck with us. Not your fault. Other people aren’t- they’re not like me, okay, they’re better than me, you’d know that if you ever met anybody-"

"Please," says Castiel. "Shut up."

"What?" Dean’s eyes bug out. He looks, as Castiel understands it, hilarious. "What did you-"

"There are billions of other creatures on this planet," Castiel says. "If I wanted to keep company with someone else, I would," Castiel says. "And I don’t. Pour me another drink." Dean stares at him and then tips the bottle again, grimly, emptying it into Castiel’s glass. Castiel drinks.

"Well," Dean says. "You got bossy."

"Being human," Castiel says, "has- shifted my perspectives."

"Yeah," Dean says, strangely quiet. "I know."

"Do you?" Castiel says. He leans closer. Can Dean tell? All that has come loose inside him, like fallen leaves. That would be something. Castiel can’t feel the alcohol but he can feel _Dean_ , being this near. Can feel the presence of his soul like a hummingbird beating hard against his ribs, can feel the warmth of him through his jeans and the way his foot shakes under the table. For all that Dean protests how rotten he is in the meat of himself, Castiel can almost feel him radiating: can feel the cells cycling and the hair growing and the electrical currents sparking in his nerves, there has never been anything more unexpectedly wonderful for Castiel, more fascinating and real, more staggering to contemplate, more brokenly divine than the orchestrated spectacle of creation, of relentless humanity, that is Dean living another day. In angelic terms Castiel realizes that this is a blasphemy, but there is no one nearby to punish it. He’s off the hook. In human terms, he also understands that this is simply very weird. “You weren’t there,” Castiel says. “For much of it.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Dean says. “I know-“

"Dean," Castiel says. He puts a hand on top of Dean’s wrist and Dean goes completely still, all but his pulse, which is staccato in Castiel’s ears, in his skin and grace. "I don’t mean it that way. I meant that I wish- I wish you had been there. I wish I had been there. With you." For a second Dean’s pulse skips. And then Dean pulls away and slides his chair back from the table, holds onto the bare edge with his hands. His knuckles turn white.

"Don’t," Dean says. "Don’t."

"Don’t what?"

"You know what," Dean says. "Don’t try to- I _screwed_ you, I left you out there, you don’t have to treat me like- you don’t.”

"How should I treat you?"

"I don’t know, Cas," Dean says, and puts his hands up above his head. "Treat me like shit. I earned it."

"No," Castiel says. He finishes his drink and sets the glass back down again. Dean doesn’t say anything at all. After a while he stands up, and sways a little on his feet. He seems less drunk than exhausted.

"I’m gonna go to bed." His voice is scraped raw. "I’m being- I should go to bed. Okay? Is that what you want me to do?"

"You need your rest," Castiel says. Dean nods and blinks and then shuffles out of the room, shoulders slumped down in defeat. He stops at the corner of the hallway and looks back at Castiel just for a second, and then walks away. Castiel gets up and puts their glasses in the sink, the empty bottle in the recycling bin. He plugs the laptop in the charger, and waits for the little light to turn on.

Castiel walks through the empty hallways of the bunker in the dark, following the softer tread of Dean’s feet in their wool socks. Dean is already in his room when Castiel comes to stand against the door. It’s not closed all the way. Through the gap he can see a sliver of light from the bedside lamp, a flash of naked skin on Dean’s back when he pulls his shirt off. He hears Dean unbuckle his belt, sees the jeans slide down and across the floor when Dean kicks them off and toes his own socks off along with them. And then Dean stands there, naked to the waist and below the thigh, bare and soft in the faint light, perfectly smooth like the skin of an egg, faint scars fading to nothing, and freckles on his shoulders and across the broad span of his back. Castiel rests his face against the door and doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t need to, but he wants to. He wants to feel the air tight in his chest, the pounding throb of his heart. He wants his face to flush and his skin to prickle; he _wants_.

"Cas," Dean says, so softly that anyone else would have missed it, barely a breath of sound between his lips. But Castiel hears it. He would have heard it from a hundred miles away, a hundred thousand. He would have heard it in space, from the furthest pit of hell. Castiel opens the door and comes inside, and then shuts it carefully behind him. Closes the shell around them both.

Dean turns out the light.


End file.
